Prime Minister David Cameron announced a new initiative last week to use GCHQ and the National Crime Agency to eliminate “digital hiding places for child abusers” on the so-called Dark Web.

We can reveal the extent to which other criminals operating on it are targeting people in the North to sell on confidential information which could leave innocent victims thousands of pounds out of pocket.

The ‘sci-fi’ sounding name, Dark Web, has been coined for an encrypted version of the internet where users are very difficult to trace.

The joint NCA-GCHQ specialist unit, announced at the #WePROTECT Children Online summit, will crack down on paedophiles who disguise their identities and to encrypt illegal images of children that they share with peers in what the Mr Cameron describes as a “horrific crime”.

Using the same system, instead of obscene pictures, the personal information of tens of thousands of people in Newcastle which have been stolen are being put up for sale to potential criminals.

An anti-fraud firm claims 83,000 items of high risk data including personal passwords, email addresses and even the three digit security number on the back of credit cards are up for grabs amongst 600,000 records they discovered on the dark web for people living in Newcastle post code areas.

The figures were revealed by C6 Intelligence, a company used by banks and insurance companies to tackle fraud and money laundering.

The firm employs ex-detectives as researchers to probe the dark web and gain access to what is uploaded. Those findings are then passed to police.

Its chief executive, Darren Innes, said: “It means there is a large number of people in Newcastle who have been compromised - and they don’t even know it.

“ID fraud to the individual costs £1bn a year where banks and credit card companies haven’t made good on these losses.”

He said the sale of personal data is almost risk-free crime because it’s so hard to stop. When one site is shut down another opens up just a few hours later.

Research carried out by C6 Intelligence revealed that data containing over 15,000 credit card numbers, 2,253 credit card and CVV numbers (the three digit security numbers on cards) and even 188 which contain information about a person’s ‘secret answer’ to gain access to their accounts are available for sale.

He added: “Worryingly the information available is growing yearly. At the beginning of this year we were finding 13,000 pieces of data each day. In the last two months this had risen to an average of 658,000 per day.”

He advised people to check their accounts and regularly change their passwords.

“There are a lot of nasty people out there, unfortunately, who are prepared to rob you,” he said.